Aggressive prejudice at the crosswalk

This morning I saw something that reduced me to tears. 

As I waited for a stoplight to change, I watched an older man of color make his way across an intersection. He seemed tired and his gait was slow. Suddenly, I heard an engine rev and roar and a giant white pick up truck with a cigar chomping driver accelerated towards the man.

The old man had to scramble to the safety of the far sidewalk to avoid the speeding truck.

He stood there for a moment looking dazed.

Then with a sad shake of his head, he ambled on – occasionally looking back at the intersection in head-shaking disbelief.

I was furious. FURIOUS!

The light wouldn't change fast enough as I waited for my chance to track that … cigar-chomping driver down. 

I prayed whether I should drive to the older gentleman and apologize for that lummox's actions.

I cried.

We humans can be so stupid.

We protect our little turf of life, too afraid to hang on to our stuff – afraid that someone else may rise up in power and take our stuff, our power, our money, our identity away.

And in the meantime, we trample others.

This should not be.

After a ridiculously long stoplight, I screeched into the intersection and began hunting the cigar-chomping driver.  A few words were in my mind…none of them missional…and none of them fit to print.

I apologized to God for my past prejudices…and that is when it hit me. It was a quiet word spoken to my angry heart. "Allie, what about the people you dismiss and hate; the people you do not forgive?"

And instead of a can of whoopass, God opened my gangrenous crusty Grinchy heart and revealed my own sin…with an offer to help heal it.

Damn.
 
I was hoping to right a wrong (read, "unleash a cathartic judgmental stream of brilliantly worded vitriol") in a cigar chomping southern good old boy…and instead got schooled by the God who loves me so.

I am not too far away from that man that I can judge him. 

His sin and my sin share the same stink.

I am aware of the danger of approaching large men with gun racks…I have experience in it.

Wisdom and a ridiculously long light won the day.

And Psalm 18, too. I had been reading it in moments of quiet this morning.

Please pray for us – the ragamuffins who fail and judge and foolishly assume our own importance.

Please pray for the people who are trampled, ignored, mistreated, used, killed, raped, and pillaged for the sport and greed of others.

That perhaps is the first best thing we can do to combat this ignorance.

The man in the mirror and all that…